The Lost Tomb 盗墓笔记 - Season 1 Episode 7 (Recap)

SakiVI: We got some clarification, and some history, and me wondering if people really wore so much in their hair in olden days, and wishing I had that much hair...kakashi: This is the first episode that makes sense from beginning to end, ahahaha! Well done, you finally learned how to tell a story :D Or maybe because they could not really butcher the flash-backs with editing.

This creature scares me!

Episode 7

Wu Xie unzips Fatty's mouth, and Fatty bursts out with "the jadeite figure, tell me about that!" Uncle three scolds him and Wu Xie zips Fatty's mouth up again and continues his story time.Hardiharhar. But okay, I'll admit it: the comical relief in this show works really well.

Wu Xie reads that the Lord Shang had another serpent dream, where the serpent sneers at him, "We are all waiting for you in Hell." Fair enough. We all know what serpent dreams mean, yes? At least according to Freud.
Not until just now, I didn't.

Lord Shang had an adviser called the Iron-Masked Scholar, whom I'll refer to as Iron Mask for short, who was a Feng Shui expert. Iron Mask told Lord Shang about the jadeite figure, that it could rejuvenate whoever wore it. Where the heck did that Iron-Maskey dude suddenly come from?! He is creepy as hell.
I thought maybe he had a deformity and so was wearing the mask. But it's probably all part and parcel of being a villain.

We cut back to the past, and to Lord Shang and Iron Mask playing Go. Lord Shang complains that he worked so hard all these years but lost his girlfriend (which is why he should have written).Yes, I don't see how he can blame anybody but himself for this.

Lord Shang says Iron Mask is the only one he trusts, and then we cut to a pretty garden with a very pretty Consort Yao Guang out to meet Lord Shang.If somebody tells you to only trust him, DO NOT TRUST HIM! This is villain rule No 1.

Lord Shang tells Yao Guang that they'll run away and she's thrilled.I find her current husband much more attractive.

Me too. I don't know why she wants to leave him for this fellow.

But, as must be expected, there is a spyHe is looking through a peep-hole, haha.

who tells the Duke, who goes, Hmmph!I once read a theory somewhere that cheaters actually almost always WANT to get discovered. That seems stupid, but maybe it's true.

If they're cheating for the cheap thrill, then there's that excitement. If they're cheating because they love that other person, then they want to get out of their current relationship, and being a responsible adult who says they want a divorce isn't working out somehow.

Frankly, he's pretty calm.Yeah, he's cool. Because he knows who has the power and who has none.

Oh, that's a good point!

The Duke orders Lord Shang out on assignment, and that will interfere with Lord Shang running away with Yao Guang. He decides to leave on assignment and come back quickly.He is not that much in love with her, it seems. The tomb robbery thrills him more.

He's not worth leaving the Duke.

Iron Mask steps out of the palace looking evil. [GIF 7:07-7:17], and he calls the green-eyed fox, telling him, you finally can do something for me.Ooooookay and WTF. Iron Mask Dude IS the Big Bad. And this poor green-eyed creature is just a servant. I feel sorry for the fox. Don't ask me why, but it's the truth.

So do I, actually.

The duke goes to visit Yao Guang. She greets him normally. He is still happy to see her and solicitous. He gives her a new hair pin and asks if she missed him. But when she says she did, he gets angry and says she missed someone else, Lord Shang! She immediately begs for mercy and takes all the blame on herself. The Duke tells her Lord Shang begged for mercy and abandoned her. Wow, way to be cruel. She's shocked.I don't have a lot of sympathy for this woman, because she's a fool. She loves a scumbag.

Me neither, really. Although I do understand she was forced into marriage with the Duke, still, he was good to her, and very loving, and she should've been more loyal.

Yao Guang doesn't believe the duke and tries to run out to see Lord Shang. The Duke tells the attendants to lock her up and never let her out. Okay, that isn't nice. Bad Duke.
Bad, but it wouldn't really be forever, and I can understand why he's so angry.

Yao Guang writes a letter and waits.On a silk scarf. It's very romantic.

Eventually, attendants come to her with a meal, and she gives one of them the letter. She says the attendant must tell Lord Shang she's fine. (Not sensible. Better that Lord Shang use his zombie ways to come save her.)

No wonder she ended up undead in some weird tomb. She lacks in the brain-department.

The Duke shows up drunk, saying he will let bygones be bygones. He gets frisky. But the maid drops the letter! Was it deliberate?

I thought so and then didn't think so. Not sure. Clumsy if it wasn't deliberate.

The Duke reads it and gets furious. He orders the maid beheaded, and Yao Guang begs for mercy. The Duke calls her an adulterer and says he'll kill Lord Shang. When Yao Guang begs for his life, the Duke pushes her over the balcony and she dies.

Very unfortunate, really. By the way, I don't think the maid who dropped it was the one who was beheaded. It was another one.

Ah, you're right.

Wu Xie reads out loud that Lord Shang spent half a year getting into a tomb with a jadeite figure.

Iron Mask had removed the jadeite figure, and it seems that body who originally had the jadeite figure was left in the spinning top coffin, the one where Little Master had kowtowed.Thanks for letting us know, drama. At this stage, we haven't already completely forgotten/dismissed what happened in previous episodes.

At any rate, with the excuse of excavating tombs, Lord Shang secretly built his own fan-like tombbecause...?

and left deceptive arrays, as Wu Xie puts it, such as the Mysterious Seven Coffins. I assume this means coffins that were traps of some sort.

Why? Why? Why?
To make death more complicated.

Then, Lord Shang killed everyone involved in the construction project because he really wasn't that nice a guy. Personally, I think that stache gave his not-niceness away.

You have a good eye for these things!

Thanks! Single staches don't bode well.

The maid shows up with news that Yao Guang died because of the Duke's violence.See, another maid was beheaded. And she probably didn't drop the message deliberately.

All cleared up.

Iron Mask tells Lord Shang not to go fight the Duke. And without any consideration for decomposition or embalming methods or mummification or whatever happened to royal bodies in those days, Iron Mask suggests bringing Yao Guang back to life with the jadeite figure, which was in a Western Zhou tomb.

Ah. So ... it is not only to preserve life, but also to bring back life?

The scene switches to the same underground tree. Yao Guang's body is on the dais with the jadeite figure on top of her. Lord Shang call her name, and, oh, this was creepy!Same old trick ... and it still works on us, hehe.

Suddenly, a spotlight falls on Lord Shang and he faces Iron Mask! Turns out that Yao Guang waking up was a hallucination. Iron Mask tells Lord Shang there's no telling how long he'll have to wait for Yao Guang to wake up. Plus, Lord Shang notes all of Lu belongs to the Duke, so running away will be difficult.

Here at the latest, some alarm bells should have started ringing behind that moustache face.

Nope, he's not too smart either.

Iron Mask suggests sealing up the tomb, keeping provisions enough for a long time (not specified how long) and waiting for Yao Guang to wake up.Yeah, okay, sounds like a great plan. NOOOOOOOOT.

I'm going to say none of this sounds good. Let the woman rest in peace. And who is to say they won't have cabin fever locked up underground like that?

Hasn't he already killed everyone? So he is killing everyone again? A different everyone? And he will sit there with all the corpses. GREAT plan

And we see the Green Eyed Fox waiting around behind Iron Mask who smirks lot, come to think of it. He's clearly Up To No Good. Or just weird.He is thinking: "This was way too easy, but I should have known as soon as I saw that moustache".

Cut to Yao Guang's body getting dug up. At least she looks pretty. I do somewhat doubt that they put royal bodies in coffins back then and buried them.

I'm fairly sure she would've gone into a royal tomb somewhere.

We see the Duke getting news that Lord Shang and his men all died in a landslide.Ha!

The Duke doesn't mind.He seems like a good ruler! Very pragmatic.

I know, right? I like him despite that little murder blip.

Fatty unzips his mouth. He wants to know what else, but that's all Wu Xie can read from the manuscript. They wonder what happened to Iron Mask. Yes, tell us! And that's when Little Master tells them that the person under the jadeite figure wasn't Lord Shang anymore.

Seems Lord Shang told Yao Guang that he would wait for her, be it a day, a year or a century. He said he would wait until she woke up or he died. And Iron Mask stabs him. So, Lord Shang dies along with everyone else.Devious!!!

And then, Iron Mask gets really weird. Okay, I know he's been weird all along, but there was villain-logic and now there's just weirdo-logic that only makes sense to weirdos. He wants the jadeite figure for himself. And he tells Foxy that when he wakes up, he'll nurture Foxy (is the Green-Eyed Fox a pet? If so, I'll stick to dogs, thanks.) for another 1,000, even 10,000 years.Hmmmm ... so he wants his body to be preserved and to wake up in the future? But why?!

And what if he was awake the entire time? How... claustrophobic.

Iron Mask wants Immortality. He switched his identity with Lord Shang's.Sure. But ... is lying in a tomb for 10'000 years worth all this?!

No, especially since he died at the end of it.

And this why I find his logic to be weirdo-logic: a self-induced coma isn't really living. Either be dead or be alive. Oh, Saki, we are one heart and one soul.
<3

Panzi asks Little Master how he knows so much, like he was actually there. Little Master blows off the question, saying he read about it in a Song Dynasty tomb with a complete silk manual. Suuuuuuuuuuure. Apparently, Iron Mask burned his entire family to death and placed a beggar in there as his own body double. Then, he put himself in Lord Shang's place in the coffin with the jadeite figure. Okay, but that's weird.Weird, but not the least logical thing in this drama.

At any rate, I can see why Little Master didn't think much of killing off Iron Mask. Iron Mask was basically under jadeite figure life support while trying to live forever. It's not even like he was doing anything, plus he was a murderer.Yes, I hope Iron Mask stays dead.

And Wu Xie still wants to know where Lord Shang's body is. Little Master says he doesn't know. He also notes that it's getting dark and that they should all leave.BODY?! I hope they're not looking for a body but a sack of bones!!! And shouldn't they just assume he was eaten by the corpse eaters?

You would think. But this story moves from dot to dot like a connect-the-dots-to-get-nothing-much thing. And yet, because it keeps moving, it's interesting. Plus, we get scenes like the one below.

Fatty protests, saying that they haven't got the afterlife seal as yet. He's also concerned Ning and her friends will come back for it. Ning just tells them she and her gang aren't looking for the seal. They have something else they want. But what is that? Little Master looks the only one to understand her. And Wu Xie believes her.

Goddamit, she keeps repeating this and I want to hit her for it. We know! But WHY ARE YOU THERE?! Why does nobody ask her?!

Client-Mercenary Confidentiality Agreement.

Fatty insists they at least take the jadeite figure, Uncle Three agrees and they get on with it.I'm on their side.

Cut to Liu Tai arguing with his hip hop friend about leaving Ning or not. Hip Hop Friend says they all have to leave at dark, and Liu Tai says he'll stay and look for Ning.It does not at all look like it's getting dark, just for the record.

Chastity and High Jr are listening to this exchange. And that's all there is to it all, really, so have a clear picture of Liu Tai.I hope they did not get a lot of money for their appearance in this drama.

I'm guessing they had lines written for them as part of a contract. Anyway, I would like to see the actor who plays High Jr in something else. Actually, I don't mind him much as a geeky sidekick who pdfs everything and knows all the techie stuff. But I would really like to get rid of Chastity. She adds nothing to this.

Cut to Wu Xie gently telling Ning that her friends are perfectly well buried in this tomb since it's, er, a tomb. Ning is sorry to bury them there. Wu Xie makes a formal bow to the bodies and wishes them peace. Ning is touched by this.It's looooooooove.

I don't actually mind. I'd like to see that developed more in season 2.

Fatty is removing the jadeite figure but is stumped. He complains Southern School guys are so impatient. They argue over who is a thief and who isn't, and they seriously have trouble deciding how to take the jadeite figure off.Yeah, cause traps of whatever. And may I say that Uncle Three is wearing his stache really well.

Not evil at all.

Wu Xie tells Ning the tree is hard to climb, but to try hard. He then asks Ning what sort of person Little Master is. She says she doesn't know him, and that her group ran in Mongolia because they were following orders. She refuses to say why they are there.Awww, yes, Ning! She is from the weaker sex. So nice of Wu Xie to be so concerned.
Not like she's a mercenary or anything. I also think Wu Xie was concerned about her injury.

But, oh shoot, there's a red corpse eater on the Green Eyed Fox head! Little Master says to run (cause it's poisonous! Not gas, but touching it is enough!), and they slowly back away, Fatty taking the manuscript. The horrible thing blocks their path and we see the group from the corpse eater's view.It's not a beetle, it's actually a drone with a camera.
Whatever it is, it's creepy!

It starts to go for Fatty, then Panzi (at Fatty's direction, actually!), and then Wu Xie kills it. Except now all the corpse eaters are coming! And they move so fast!

Wue Xie batted it away! He must be a very good baseball player, haha. And then, he was so proud. He is kinda cute.

Wu Xie has been growing on me. I rather like him now, whereas before he was just there.

The group runs to the tree (Fatty quickly puts something into his pocket ... seems to be the silk manuscript) and climb as fast as they can! Wu Xie sees an explosive and is about to shoot when Uncle Three and Fatty argue over whether he should. Ning just takes the gun and shoots.They are so DAMN slow going up!! And it's actually futile, everybody knows how good corpse-eaters are at climbing anything!!!

Oooh, I see Little Master holding on.Still shirtless, I see.

No questioning his shirtlessness. Tis a rule of the show.

And those things are still coming at them despite the explosion when Wu Xie falls!

Oh........ shit.

Comments

Ooh, we went from historical drama to modern day insect invasion and ended with Wu Xie falling! I really like how this show keeps things moving along, even if the things don't always, okay, most of the time, make any sense. We learnt what Lord Shang's end was, who was who, and who had what. We also get a human face to the people held in the tomb. I could do without the corpse eaters though. (I was going to pontificate about how one should try to tolerate all creatures, and then thought, nah. Something like a corpse eater is too disgusting for anything except total annihilation.)This was a very good episode, because there were no major discontinuities. And we got some explanations! Actually .... a lot of them!